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266 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 



and as I passed from the tliiriking of the passage to the lan- 

 guage in which it is expressed, — ' This Greek of the untaught 

 Galilean fisherman,' I said, ' so admired by scholars and 

 critics for its unaffected dignity and force, was not acquired, 

 as that of Paul may have been, in the ordinary way, but 

 formed a portion of the Pentecostal gift ! Here, then, im- 

 mediately under my eye, on these pages, are there embodied, 

 not, as in many other parts of the Scriptures, the mere de- 

 tails of a miracle, but the direct results of a miracle. How 

 strange ! Had the old tables of stone been placed before roe, 

 with what an awe-struck feeling would I have looked on the 

 characters traced upon them by God's own finger ! How is 

 it that I have failed to remember, that in the language of 

 these Epistles, miraculously impressed by the Divine power 

 upon the mind, I possessed as significant and suggestive a 

 relic as that wbicli the inscription miraculously impressed by 

 the Divine power upon the stone could possibly have fur- 

 nished ?" It was a striking thought ; and in the course of 

 our walk, which led us over richly fossiliferous beds of the 

 Old Red Sandstone, to a deposit of the Eathie Lias, largely 

 charged with the characteristic remains of that formation, I 

 ventured to connect it with another. " In either case," I 

 remarked, as we seated ourselves beside a sea-cliff, sculptured 

 over with the impressions of extinct plants and shells, " your 

 relics, whether of the Pentecostal Greek or of the characters 

 inscribed on the old tables of stone, could address themselves 

 to but previously existing belief The sceptic would see in 

 the Sinaitic characters, were they placed before him, merely 

 the work of an ordinary tool ; and in the Greek of Peter and 

 John, a well-known language, acquired, he would hold, in the 

 common way. But what say you to the relics that stand out 

 in such bold relief from the rocks beside us, in their character 

 as the results of miracle ? The perished tribes and races 

 which they represent all began to exist Theic is no truth 



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